Well we're Movin' on Up!
To the east side!
To a dee-luxe apartment in the sky.
We've finally got a piece of the pie!

Translation:

I'm moving on Over!
To WordPress!
To a new website.
I've finally got a piece of the www!

Ok, so this was a real bad attempt at being quirky and fun. If you didn't get the gist of things, this blog is moving effective, well, today. Adjust all those bookmarks out there to: www.thinkoutsidethebox2.com. Blogger was great while it latest but I found myself frustrated by some limitations which made me realize I had outgrown what they had to offer. No dissing of Blogger here, just reality. I'll keep this site up for awhile but will be moving some of it over to my new home labeling them as classic posts. My frequency of posts should improve, although your breath on that one. I'm still juggling too many hats to allow me to post on a regular basis. Just continue to view my posts as a nice surprise. A little gift from me to you!

Ok, so a friend of mine (lovely childhood friend that I reconnected with thanks to Facebook) and I have started a virtual book club. We have named it: Insomniacs. I found the site, she came up with the name. Such a perfect team. I love the name because I have so enjoyed reading the past several months because I do suffer from sleep deprivation. Apparently she does too. Did I say such a perfect team? Anyway, the site is public which means anyone can join. Details of how it will be handled are still in development but basically it's a for fun site, one where anyone can post books they have read, discuss books they are reading and get information on books they may want to read in the future. We will post a book that we recommend everyone reading (book of the month so to speak) to give us all a chance to be on the same page (sorry, couldn't help it!). This is of course optional and over time as we get more members we can choose the book by voting. Since it's just Suz and I at this point we have gone ahead and chosen the first book. Since we are into vampires as of late (again, no pun intended) we have decided on The House of Night Series book 1, Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. Depending on how we like it we may know what next months book will be (book 2 in the series?).

Right now Insomniacs is a baby site but I'm hoping it will grow and eventaully take on a life of its own. So, if you are a book reader, or are ready to begin reading again, check it out: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/17451.Insomniacs We'd love to have you join us!

If you are not able to gain access from this link, please let me know. I will do some research and promptly get back to you with how to access.

Working on taxes. Seems like I was just doing this yesterday (and that post was from two years ago!). Since I have taxes on my mind I thought I'd share a little tax tip with you free of charge.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A TAX PROFESSIONAL. THIS IS SIMPLY A TAX TIP FROM SOMEONE WHO IS EXHAUSTED FROM DOING THEIR OWN PERSONAL TAXES AND IS LOOKING FOR A BREAK OF ANY KIND.

I use TurboTax and a few years ago I received along with my tax software another software called ItsDeductible. ItsDeductible allowed me to enter in all the items we had donated to charity and it assigned a value to it and to be honest, the value it assigns is higher than I was using (by what I considered a significant amount). Yeah - love it when that happens! This year I didn't receive the software and was a bit bummed. After doing a little bit of research I quickly discovered that they have eliminated the desktop software and moved everything online - you can check it out here. Now, I thought I was special because it was free for me but it appears, according to their website that this is free to all!

To use it you simply logged in with your account information (and if you don't have an account you can set one up for free) and then click on the ItsDeductible link. At this point you must decide if you are going to work on 2007 (review previous data), 2008 or 2009 data. I chose 2008 since that's what I'm working on right now. I simply pulled out my receipts and notes and was able to enter what we had donated fairly fast. It's a simple point and click type of set-up which makes it really nice. When I was done with 2008 I decided to go ahead and enter the 2009 donations we've already made (we make a lot of donations, I get so tired of stuff lying around!).

Here's a picture of the donation page:


If you have set-up an account, your data is saved when you exit. This is nice because you can access the data throughout the year. I went ahead and created a shortcut on my toolbar to this page so I can update it after each trip to our local Goodwill.

Now here's the bonus beauty of this little tool. Since I use TurboTax I was able to download all the data in just a few steps. I was prompted to enter my username and password for my account and then I clicked the Import Now button. Viola, it was in Turbo Tax in a matter of seconds. A lot of data entered with very little effort on my part. Now that's what I'm talking about!

Now, if I could only get this automated with all other aspects of my taxes. One of my New Years Resolutions should have been to actually use Quicken! Is it too late?

P.S. I believe you can use ItsDeductible without establishing an account. The data just wouldn't be saved for future use.

I have recently discovered the joy of dual monitors and thought I'd share some of the bits of wisdom I have learned about setting these up.

I happened to have an extra flat panel monitor at home that I decided to try hooking up to my laptop. It was a really simple process once I understood the basics of what I had to do. To hook up the monitor I simply plugged the monitor into the open blue port on the back of my laptops docking station. If you don't have a docking station, you would just plug the monitor into the open blue port on the back of your laptop. Don't forget to turn on the power. Once that's done it's settings time. Using Windows XP you simply:

1. Right click on the desktop and go to Properties.


2. In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab.


3. Click the monitor icon labeled 2, and then select the Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor checkbox.


4. If necessary, drag the monitor icons so that they are arranged in the same way as the monitors on your desk. Click the Identify button to indicate which monitor is 1 and which monitor is 2. (I put my second monitor to the left of my laptop. This requires me to drag the monitor icons so monitor #2 is listed first on this screen).


5. If necessary, click the icon #2 and change the screen resolution to your liking.

That's it. Now you can open different applications and leave them displayed for reference on your second monitor. Here's a picture of a laptop with a secondary monitor. This is not a photo of my set-up. It's a pictured borrowed from Flickr.

However, while using this set-up I quickly found out that the task toolbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen) from my laptop did not extend onto the second monitor. This is not a huge deal but did become a bit problematic. After some quick googling I found the MultiMon Task Bar which can be downloaded for free (a pro version is also available if you want more capabilities for a fee).

I've been using this set-up for a couple of months and it works great. So great that I've been wanting to hook up a second monitor at the office so my productivity could sky-rocket! Over this past weekend I was finally able to secure a second, flat panel monitor which I promptly took to the office and tried to set-up in a similar fashion to how I described it above. Unfortunately, my desktop only had one blue monitor plug and with the desktop configuration I ended up having two that need to be plugged in. What I quickly found out is if the computer doesn't have two blue ports on the back then your video card doesn't support two monitors and you have to purchase a new video card. Uggh! Oh, and don't be fooled by one of these little devices:

I too thought this would work. It's a 2-Port VGA Video Splitter. While this does allow you to hook up two monitors to a desktop, using only one port, it only provides a mirrored image on both monitors. If you really want to see double of everything, this would be the way to go. Unfortunately, this was not my intention. So I have now purchased this little beauty as instructed by Dell:
I thought it was going to have two ports but now I'm thinking it will only have one and I will add it to the computer I currently have. Keep your fingers crossed it all works according to plan!

This is on the Domino website:

I was very surprised to hear the news. Especially since I started receiving this subscription because another subscription I had closed it's doors. This was my replacement, and I really liked it. The website will be up for a few more weeks.

I hope everyone had a great (and safe) New Years Eve. I'm not sorry to say I'm happy to have said goodbye to 2008. I'm looking forward to all the good that 2009 will bring to everyone!

We spent last night (as we have the past +/- five years) with our neighbors. We house hop year after year, all bringing food, drinks and the ever so popluar Catch Phrase. And this year was the first year that everyone didn't run out at 12:05. We waited until at least 12:15. So proud.

Today is a day of rest and relaxation. I'm not even putting pressure on myself to take down the tree, a task I'm waiting until Saturday to do. But, the task of removing and storing my decorations has gotten easier thanks to this little beauty:

Santa had brought the boys one each last year and I was able to grab another one this year so I can store each of the boys ornaments in their own box and the remaining (mom and dad) ornaments in ours. This way, many, many years from now when the boys decide they must move onto their own place and start their own traditions, I will be able to hand them their own nicely stored boxed of ornaments. I can only hope they continue with the hodge-podged ornament trees instead of the theme related trees so many do these days but it will be their decision at that point. Let's change the subject shall we...

It's been a long time since I've read a book. I believe the last book I read was Harry Potter - how many years has that been? I decided our time in Florida was a good opportunity to read again so I picked up Nicholas Sparks: The Choice. You just can't go wrong with Nicholas Sparks, seriously. It was very good and satisfying. I was able to finish it during the week, a proud accomplishment for me. :-) I wasn't ready to read anymore until we got in the car to head back home, an 18 hour drive. While at the store I ended up picking up a second book in case I needed an alternate selection. I surprised myself when I chose Stephenie Meyers: Twilight. I sucummed to the buzz about the book I'll admit it. I knew the movie was out. Although I am not into vampires, would have never dreamed of ever reading a book about them, I decided to commit and give it a try. Know what? It was really good - the buzz was correct! I read for about 14 hours straight, not even getting car sick, and I finished the entire book before we got home. I'm now ready to go out and see the movie and I'm already on chapter 3 of the second book in the series: New Moon. What's so exciting for me about this series is it's already out there, and in paperback too! With Harry Potter, I really enjoyed getting to know the characters and watching them evolve book after book, but I hated waiting for each book to come out and when it did being forced to buy the hardback copy which is more expensive and hard to hold (can't snuggle up with a hard back booked as easy!). The benefit to me for the Twilight series is I'm way behind the curve. There's something to be said for not being in the know.

One of the Christmas Gifts I had asked for this year was the Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet. Thanks Dad & Ione for getting it for me! I wanted it to help with photo manipulations but turns out there is so much more you can do. Here's one of Chad's masterpieces:

Not too shabby is it?! I can't wait to take the time to really sit down and get a better understand of everything this little beauty can do. Going to be a lot of fun! Another gift I got was one of these cuties:

Boring right?! No, it really isn't! I was using it a little bit this morning and it was great! I enter a ton of numbers into my laptop and I really missed not having a 10-key pad. I just hate those numbers at the top of the keyboard, they are so unnatural for me. This little baby connects to my laptop via USB. I know will be a life saver. Thanks boys and JB!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years Eve. I expect nothing but the best for everyone this year. I have a feeling it's going to be a great one!